Devin Johnson
Graduate Language Specialist
232 Sparks Building, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802
Education:
Devin Johnson is Dual-Title PhD student in Applied Linguistics and African Studies having obtained a BA in French with a minor in Linguistics from Truman State University in 2022 and a double MA in French Instruction and African Studies in 2026, prior to coming to Penn State.
Biography:
Devin has taught English as a Second Language (ESL) at the Elementary, Secondary, and Postsecondary Levels, French/Francophone language/culture(s) courses at both the secondary and postsecondary levels, Public Speaking and Rhetoric at the Postsecondary level (with particular attention to international, multilingual students), and Spanish at the Secondary level, in addition to guest lecturing in French and American Studies courses at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumase, Ghana. A crucial approach to Devin’s teaching is ensuring a comfortable, judgment-free environment for all students to flourish and explore themselves in the respective language(s), culture(s), and reality(ies) of academic and social engagement.
Devin looks forward to working with and making connections with Penn State’s International Student community(ies).
Research Interests:
Devin’s current research interests reside in decolonial approaches to language instruction and methods, critical autoethnography as decolonial praxis (especially for teachers of traditionally marginalized language communities), pedagogies of social justice and appropriate cultural instruction in the world language classroom, Language Policy and Planning (LPP), African multilingual realities inside and outside of the classroom, and Ecolinguistics/Ecoliteracy(ies).